Rightways

Friday, February 21, 2014

Beware of Cheque scams, banks take responsibility

Senior citizens' cheques were intercepted and stampered with in separate incidents
PETALING JAYA: Two senior citizens nearly lost
thousands of ringgit when their cheques were intercepted and tampered
with in separate incidents.

In the first incident, a man who paid
his utility bills through cheques sent via mail was shocked to find
that the amount deducted from his account was 10 times what he had
written on one of the cheques.

The foreign national, who only wanted to be known as Richard, owns a home in Malaysia.

He issued a cheque for RM200 to pay his electricity bill in November last year.

“When I received the bank statement, I was shocked to see that the amount deducted was more than RM2,000,” he said.

When the bank gave him a copy of the cheque that was deposited, he realised that the cheque had been replaced with a fake one.

“The cheque was a different one altogether and it was made to one Alan
Lim @ Lim Sze Wei. Only the serial number was the same as the one I had
issued and there was a forged version of my signature,” he said, adding
that the design on the cheque was also different as he was still using
an older version.

“I only issue cheques once or twice a month and
have not changed the cheque book for years. The old version had the
bank logo in the centre. The fake cheque had a completely different
design without the logo in the centre,” said Richard, who is in his 80s.
Richard then lodged a police report.

In the second case, an
87-year-old pensioner’s cheque was believed to be intercepted and the
name of the payee and amount altered, said his daughter K.L. Wong.

She said her father routinely paid his insurance policy premiums by cheque sent via mail, which was what he did on Jan 31.

He wrote a cheque for RM169 payable to a bank’s card centre to pay for his policy and posted it the next day.

On Feb 13, Wong, who handles most her father’s accounts because he is
wheelchair-bound, called the bank to check if the cheque had been
cleared.

“I was told the card centre had not received it and there was no payment for the December and January premiums,” she said.

Upon checking the account balance, she discovered that RM4,600 had been deducted.

“At first, the bank thought the cheque might have been processed and paid to the wrong person.”

When she requested for a scanned image of the cheque from the bank, she discovered all the payment details had been altered.

“It was the same cheque but the original details were somehow ‘washed
out’. Only my father’s signature remained. The cheque was altered to pay
someone by the name of Lim Teng Yong,” she said, adding that the person
was unknown to her father.

Wong said the bank admitted that it
was not the first complaint it had received involving the same name
being used to cash fraudulent cheques.

She added that the bank promised to investigate the matter and she lodged a police report the next day.

Richard and Wong’s father’s cheques were issued by the same bank. After internal investigations, the bank reimbursed both men.

“It was good the bank was willing to take responsibility but there is
obviously a scam going on. The public should be aware of how cheques are
being tampered with or forged,” said Wong.